13
Upon landing in Veracruz, General Forey said:
"It is not against te Mexican people that I come to make war, but it is against a handful of men without scruple and without conscience, who have trampled upon justice, governing by means of sanguinary terror, and who, to support themselves, are not ashamed to sell the territory of their country to foreigners by piecemeal."
It was natural that this calumny, uttered by the chief of the expedition, or rather by Napoleon III himself, since it was he who indite Forey's proclamation, should find an echo later on in the French Legislative Body, and it was there in fact where M. Corta repeated, on the 15th of April 1865, the accusation against Juarez, affirming most positively that he had sold the State of Sonora to the United-States for seventy five millions of francs. Just as it might be expected, the calumnious statement was immediately denied, and it was Mr. Romero who denied it, in a letter dated the 2nd of May of the same year, which he addressed to the President of the Associated Press of New-York. The letter was published in the newspapers of said city.
In the resolutions reported by the Committee appointed by the Council of Notables to decide upon the form of government which should be given to Mexico, a committee which was composed of Don Ignacio Aguilar, Don Joaquin Velasquez de Leon, Don Teofilo Marin, and Don Cayetano Orozco, it was said: "The world already knows the attempts made by the Government of Juarez in Veracruz, and afterwards in Mexico, to obtain a direct protectorate by the United-States, which would have been the death of our independence."
